1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to personal computers and more specifically to an apparatus for software emulation of hardware tasks in an IBM personal computer (PC) architecture independent of and fully transparent to an operating system running on the PC.
2. Prior Art
The IBM personal computer (PC) architecture has become a de-facto standard for personal computers over the past decade. The main hardware part of the computer is called a mother board which is a large printed circuit board that has plugged into it the computer's central processing unit (CPU) which is an Intel brand microprocessor, random access memory (RAM), microprocessor support chips and has expansion slots that receive add-in cards. The IBM PC architecture uses a Microsoft brand disc operating system (DOS) as the software program that controls the overall operation of the computer. In the course of its development, an open system architecture of the IBM PC has allowed and fostered the development of several technologies as add-in card functions, such as sound cards. Increasingly, these functions are being absorbed onto the motherboard.
The pressure to reduce cost is upon all PC system manufacturers. At the same time, the processing power of the microprocessor is increasing rapidly. These circumstances make software emulation of certain previously hardware tasks very attractive. One of the problems in achieving this software emulation is the unruly nature of software written for the Microsoft DOS operating system. Application programs frequently bypass the operating system and some take over completely, addressing the hardware directly. This makes software emulation of tasks very difficult.
It is therefore desirable to provide a method and apparatus for software emulation of hardware tasks in an IBM personal computer (PC) architecture independent of and fully transparent to the operating system running on the PC.